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Andrew Tettenborn

Andrew Tettenborn

The Spectator

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What Nigel Farage gets wrong about ‘two-tier justice’

wednesday 2

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Beware Labour’s desire to get cosy with Europe

09.12.2024 30

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Peer review / The Lords needs more peers like Charlotte Owen

It is clear who is the unnamed target of Labour’s rule change over political nominations to the House of Lords. When two bright but relatively...

06.12.2024 20

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Why did the state let Kneecap win?

There was something predictable in the government’s agreement last week to accept defeat in the Belfast High Court. The overtly republican Irish...

02.12.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Grim up north / Is there really a human rights crisis in the Highlands?

It’s grim up north in Scotland, we’re told. A mission from Edinburgh has produced a report about the woes of life in the Highlands and Islands,...

30.11.2024 20

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Why shouldn’t schools encourage middle class aspirations?

Education Minister Bridget Phillipson wants to make our schools engines of ambition and social mobility. Good for her. Unfortunately, some of the the...

21.11.2024 9

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Non-hate crime incidents are out of control

It’s police overreach season again on free speech and non-crime hate incidents, or NCHIs. On Remembrance Day morning, we had Essex police’s...

15.11.2024 20

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Surely no MP can vote for this assisted dying bill

There’s a beguiling simplicity to the idea behind Kim Leadbetter’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, published yesterday. If someone is...

12.11.2024 8

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Raising university tuition fees will only delay the inevitable

Universities in the UK desperately needed Bridget Phillipson’s announcement this afternoon of a rise in home tuition fees. They will now rise from...

04.11.2024 4

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Street lights are costing Britain too much

The East Riding of Yorkshire is flat, prosperously agricultural and slightly off the beaten track. Deeply conservative, it isn’t the place you would...

29.10.2024 40

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Chris Kaba and the danger of inquests 

The firearms officer Martyn Blake was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba this week. Kaba was a serious wrong ‘un: a violent gangland enforcer with a...

24.10.2024 6

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

It’s shameful that an army veteran was convicted over a prayer for his dead son

Adam Smith-Connor was this week convicted of a heinous offence, slapped with a conditional discharge and a costs order for £9,000. The actual crime...

17.10.2024 4

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Labour’s worrying creep back towards the EU

In Labour’s manifesto this year, Keir Starmer cannily sought to reassure any Brexiteers out there by ruling out a return to the EU single market....

09.10.2024 8

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Boris is right: we need a referendum on the ECHR

Nobody should be surprised that Boris Johnson favours a referendum on leaving the ECHR, as his book now makes clear. Boris is an instinctive populist...

04.10.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Why tuition fees should go up

The fees English universities are allowed to charge home students in England are fixed by government fiat. At £9,250 per year, they are some of the...

30.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Labour’s two-tier prison plans

There are not many women in prison, but those who are inside show worryingly high rates of mental illness, suicide and self-harm; their families...

26.09.2024 30

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Why will it cost £300 million to replace Britain’s border fleet?

The fleet of border control cutters responsible for patrolling in our waters (and at times for dealing with irregular migrants on them) is showing its...

19.09.2024 5

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Labour is in denial about our bad universities

Our universities are in a mess. Too many degrees lack intellectual quality and utility, and leave those doing them with little but disappointment and...

09.09.2024 7

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Needs improvement / Scrapping one-word Ofsted verdicts is a mistake

The decision to scrap one or two-word Ofsted inspection grades for England’s schools is good news for teachers – but bad news for just about...

02.09.2024 4

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Starmer may regret an outdoor smoking ban

It’s a curious political world. Few who voted Labour last month actually wanted Labour policies, or for that matter had more than the haziest idea...

29.08.2024 5

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Starmer may regret an indoor smoking ban

It’s a curious political world. Few who voted Labour last month actually wanted Labour policies, or for that matter had more than the haziest idea...

29.08.2024 6

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

The worrying return of non-hate crime incidents

The longer it continues in office, the more reactionary and beholden to vested interests this government turns out to be. So far it has surrendered to...

29.08.2024 4

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Louise Haigh’s LTN policy is doomed to fail

The Labour party is in a bind over cars. Its instincts – collectivist, green, managerialist – strongly favour anti-car measures like low traffic...

23.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Are too many young people going to university? 

University hopefuls trepidatiously opening their official A-level emails this morning will on the whole be happier than last year. All the indications...

15.08.2024 8

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Free speech / Will a social media crackdown really stop future riots?

The riots of 2024 will be remembered for many things. One of them is the way the establishment spectacularly closed ranks on online speech. ...

12.08.2024 3

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Beijing blues / Why Britain must say no – again – to China’s ‘super embassy’ in London

The previous Tory government may not have been very successful in containing the global ambitions of China, but at least it tried. Whether David...

11.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Prosecuting rioters for terrorism is a mistake

Authorities encountering the kind of civil disorder that has marked the last few days in Britain are best advised to keep a cool head and quietly...

08.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

24-hour courts are risky, but right

Yesterday evening, the government instituted a little-known procedure called the Additional Courts Protocol. Set up following the 2011 London riots,...

04.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Universities / Does Labour care about free speech on campus?

Universities fought tooth and nail against plans to impose fines if they failed to uphold freedom of speech. That proposal – contained in last...

26.07.2024 8

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Letting our worst universities collapse would be an act of kindness

Nobody said much about it before the election, but the new government inherits a ghastly financial problem with the higher education system. Rising...

24.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Just Stop Oil fanatics deserve their lengthy jail terms

The prison sentences passed on the Just Stop Oil protesters who immobilised the M25 – five years for Roger Hallam and four for the others – were...

19.07.2024 4

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Have the Republicans resolved their abortion dilemma?

The botched assassination attempt on Donald Trump could well generate a wave of sympathy that helps waft him into the White House in November. Another...

17.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

How Hungary’s presidency could shake up the EU

Life in the Berlaymont building, the Brussels headquarters of the European Union, just got a bit more surreal. A striking feature of the EU is its...

02.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Unesco’s Stonehenge threat is not worth taking seriously

If you gaze south from the sarsens of Stonehenge, your view at present is of a constant crocodile of cars and caravans grinding along the nearby A303...

27.06.2024 5

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Assange is released – but there is still a danger to press freedom 

James Cleverly may now be a care-and-maintenance Home Secretary, but even so he will be heaving a sigh of relief as he finally tapes up the file on...

25.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

The Supreme Court has put the future of fossil fuel projects in jeopardy

‘Britain is evolving from a democracy towards a kritarchy – the rule of lawyers,’ wrote Ross Clark in today’s Spectator magazine. His gloomy...

20.06.2024 9

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Reform’s radical manifesto would do wonders for democracy

In this election, neither Labour nor the Tories are particularly interested in serious constitutional reform. By contrast, there’s one smaller...

17.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Cosying up to the EU would do Britain more harm than good

If anyone thought our relations with the EU since the Brexit referendum would be a respectful dialogue of equals, they were quickly disabused....

15.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Legal battle / Why the EU is cracking down on Hungary’s migrant policy

We are set for another high-profile tussle between Budapest and Brussels. Yesterday the EU Court of Justice chose to impose a whopping €200 million...

14.06.2024 3

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Sunak’s crime crackdown won’t pay off for the Tories

The Tories are pledging to reshape our homicide laws if they win re-election. There could, as in many US states, be first-degree murder for...

06.06.2024 8

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Cracking down on the ECHR won’t help Sunak now

Rishi Sunak’s unequivocal statement this week about sex and the Equality Act was a clever piece of electioneering. Subsequent reports suggesting...

04.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

The Northern Irish law posing a threat to free speech in Britain

On Friday, the High Court in Northern Ireland deflected a serious threat to the right to free speech, not only in the province but also in the country...

03.06.2024 50

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Fewer kids should go to university

Rishi Sunak said on Tuesday what many of us have quietly suspected for some time. As a nation, we have too few apprentices and too many university...

30.05.2024 8

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Is the West being hypocritical about Georgia’s foreign agents law?

The Georgian parliament has rammed through its new foreign agents law amid massive protests, overriding the veto of pro-western and pro-EU president...

29.05.2024 20

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Judges are empowering Just Stop Oil

It has been argued that the preparedness of the courts to declare governmental action unlawful is vital to the rule of law. Well, up to a point,...

22.05.2024 30

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Press freedom means protecting Julian Assange

James Cleverly won’t be able to move the Julian Assange file out of his inbox quite yet after all. The High Court has allowed Assange to appeal once...

20.05.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Early years / Stay-at-home parents don’t need free nursery places

Except for households blessed with rather generous incomes, most mothers these days have to work to keep a family decently fed and housed. Some...

17.05.2024 20

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Do we need a Sikh court?

Last week in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, nearly 50 prominent Sikhs gathered to mark the formation of the world’s first specifically Sikh court. When the...

29.04.2024 20

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

The UNRWA hasn’t yet earned our trust in Gaza

Before 7 October last year, observers had long suspected an uncomfortable symbiosis between UNRWA, the UN organisation tasked with organising aid to...

23.04.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

The National Portrait Gallery’s bizarre obsession with slavery

We might have foreseen that the movement to radicalise the art and museum world would in time come back to bite its own children. It has happened more...

17.04.2024 10

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

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